


hold the twist

by papyrocrat



Category: Dollhouse
Genre: Epitaph era, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-10
Updated: 2010-11-10
Packaged: 2017-11-17 14:49:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/552749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/papyrocrat/pseuds/papyrocrat





	hold the twist

The door snaps open. Alpha continues to browse the makeshift bar as he pulls out his gun and aims. To the left, thirty degrees, braced for recoil. “If you’re here selling Girl Scout cookies, I’ll take two boxes of Thin Mints. Otherwise, I suggest you try down the hall; I’m not much of a host.” He chuckles, and that’s when he looks up.

Echo’s holding her gun straight out in front of her. The barrels stare each other down. “All out of Thin Mints. Just here for the company.” They lower their weapons.

He holds up the green bottle. “Want some-“ he breaks off, and between them twenty-seven hearts break; Alpha can hear them all “-scotch?”  Echo closes her eyes for a moment.

Alpha winces and presses his jaw to his shoulder. In annoyance, mostly, but also sympathy, and pulsating loss. “I have vodka, too, and other um,” he gestures towards the hookah and the unsubtle shoebox lurking in the corner behind it. Whoever’d lived here had been wiped relaxed, sated, reveling in their dulled but pulsating humanity. They’d gone out with a good taste in their minds. That’s something, he supposes. “Refreshments.”

Echo shrugs. “I like pretty much anything.”

“Bet you hate pretty much everything, too.” He pours out two generous vodkas and ushers Echo to the battered sofa. He’s several men of class, after all. She starts to explain why she’s there, but it’s not important. She trails off and looks down through her drink, lost in terrible loneliness.

 _Interesting._ She’s not usually alone these days. “What happened to Captain America?”

Her eyes and mouth flicker through eight faces, each more conflicted than the last. “It’s complicated with Paul.” _There’s nothing complicated about Paul_ , Alpha thinks, and chokes back a scoff. “He thinks he understands, because of how some nut job fried his brain and necessitated major neurological rewiring-“

“Hey now. I haven’t killed anyone for weeks.” Four weeks, three days, and six and a half hours, to be precise.

Echo salutes him with a dry toast as she raises the chipped Mason jar to her lips. “Well, you’re doing better than me on that front.” She winces as she swallows. There haven’t been mixers, since the mindquake, to take off the sharp edges. Alpha doesn’t mind, but he knows Echo likes peaches and oranges and margaritas with salt. “How do you do it?” she asks bluntly. Some things she doesn’t dilute.

“’It’ being ‘live with the crippling burden of breathtaking handsomeness?’ I carry it around on my magnificent biceps.”

She stares; for a minute as blank as she’d ever been. “’It’ meaning ‘everything.’ All of you.”

He downs his glass in one. “Well, I kinda went through a phase.” He waves his finger across his own face. “But, I don’t know. I built my place away from Rossum to keep myself above it all. Then I figured out I wasn’t enough company for myself. Stay busy. Stay distracted. Be around people who aren’t…us.” Her face falls again. “I mean, me. Us-me. Not” he waves his drink in the space between them “us-us.” She’s dissatisfied, and pleased, and a little turned on by the mischievous smile he gives her. “I found a reason.”

“I have a reason. But I don’t have time to go through a phase.”

“Well, then, I guess you’ll need a study buddy to come with you.” He nods toward his pack as he stands up and reaches his hand to her. A gentleman is a gentleman even in tattered cargo pants.

She takes his hand and pulls him back down towards the bottomless beauty of her serious eyes and messy hair. “Not just yet.” He resists, for some insane reason, caught between all of his selves and flinching with frustration. She feels it, and raises a hand to smooth out his face. “You can’t hurt us.”

“Us-you?”

“Us-us. Just us. Just for a little while,” and she sounds so tired and looks so beautiful and his chest folds under the contradiction.

Their foreheads touch. “I want you,” he whispers.

“We need you,” she murmurs back. And they sink into the couch, and they find another reason.


End file.
